Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday July 11, 2014 @05:06PM
from the fruit-ninja-must-have-cause-a-lot-of-traffic-deaths dept.

MojoKid writes:
"When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came forth last year with U.S. government spying secrets, it didn't take long to realize that some of the information revealed could bring on serious repercussions — not just for the U.S. government, but also for U.S.-based companies. The latest to feel the hit? None other than Apple, and in a region the company has been working hard to increase market share: China. China, via state media, has today declared that Apple's iPhone is a threat to national security — all because of its thorough tracking capabilities. It has the ability to keep track of user locations, and to the country, this could potentially reveal "state secrets" somehow. It's being noted that the iPhone will continue to track the user to some extent even if the overall feature is disabled. China's iPhone ousting comes hot on the heels of Russia's industry and trade deeming AMD and Intel processors to be untrustworthy. The nation will instead be building its own ARM-based "Baikal" processor.

Not only do people keep their whole lives on their phone, email, pictures, documents, passwords, social media accounts, but the same device is fully portable, has a GPS receiver, picks up and connects to open wifi APs, has a microphone, and accelerometer.

So you can find out what your target is up to, what he's planning, who he's talking to, where he is, and how fast he's moving, and by extension you get acces to his digital life.

The NSA and GCHQ have always wanted more info on China. From flying drones Lockheed D-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] to funding CIA Tibetan program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] to using commercial shipping to gather signals intelligence.
China has its own brands of phones to sell, domestically and globally. Why risk staff wondering around with product lines mentioned in connection with foreign intelligence services?

But according to analysts and officials, the communist-controlled People’s Republic of China operates the single largest intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world—and its growing appetite for secrets has apparently become insatiable.

From economic and military espionage to keeping tabs on exiled dissidents, China’s global spying operations are rapidly expanding. And, therefore, so is the threat. Some analysts even argue the regime—which is also gobbling up such key natural resources as farmland, energy, and minerals—has an eye on dominating the world.

Estimates on the number of spies and agents employed by the communist state vary widely. According to public statements by French author and investigative journalist Roger Faligot, who has written several books about the regime’s security services, there are around two million Chinese working directly or indirectly for China’s intelligence apparatus.

Other analysts say it would be impossible to count the exact number. ‘I doubt they know themselves,’ says Richard Fisher, a senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center. Regardless, the number is undoubtedly extraordinary. ‘China can rightly claim to have the world’s largest, most amorphous, but also most active intelligence sector,’ he says.

Germany is full of Russian and Chinese spies working to get information about top business and technology developments, according to the country’s domestic intelligence service.

Studies show that the German economy loses around €50 billion a year as a consequence, Burkhard Even, head of the counterintelligence section of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the audience at a recent security forum in Bonn. . . .

There are around 80,000 Chinese people living in Germany, Even said, many of whom are commercial spies. China is also buying into, or taking over companies completely, in order to get access to new technological developments. . . . . . the Chinese were mostly active in the electronic sector. Some reports suggest the Chinese intelligence services have up to a million agents across the world collecting technical and business data to support their industries.

[telegraph.co.uk]

"It is estimated that at least 20 Foreign intelligence services are operating to some degree against UK interests. Of greatest concern are the Russians and Chinese. The number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since the Soviet times."

The difference is that it is America that is a direct threat to my personal freedom and the personal freedom of much of the world. Remember, for most Americans Constitutional freedoms only apply to American citizens and the rest of us are fair game.

You don't seem to be acquainted with the concept of sovereignty. Law contains rights and responsibilities, but in general any body of law is limited to the territory of the sovereign government that created the law. American law governs America. Canadian law governs Canada. Finnish law governs Finland. Canadian law doesn't govern Finland, Germany, or America. Finnish law doesn't govern Italy or Cuba. The law of the sea is a special case. (I wouldn't be surprised if you are a pirate even if you don't

It is generally considered that certain fundamental rights exist outside of law so while American law governs America, it does not mean that America should just ignore rights outside of America. Even worse America has a long history of actually forcing regime change, which breaks sovereignty.

If America truly does threaten your freedoms I assume you must be doing something unsavory and special.

Yes, the evil of playing my legally bought DVD on my computer after breaking the encryption on it.

There are several well known cases where people were forcibly extradited or are under a significant threat and pressure to be extradited to US for things that are legal in their country of residence, but illegal in US.

Kim Dotcom comes to mind of the more recent and noted cases, as well as a couple of others.

The Internet entrepreneur and his fellow defendants— Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk —were due to appear in a New Zealand court at the end of July for a hearing on whether they would be sent to the U.S. to face charges including criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and conspiracy to commit racketeering.

It is ridiculous to pretend that extraordinary rendition is a threat to the rights of typical Europeans. Or did I miss a trend in Europe to join international terrorist groups?

Now look at what the claim was that I responded to: "The difference is that it is America that is a direct threat to my personal freedom and the personal freedom of much of the world."

And holy crap, "he could actually fight the decision after they broke into his home with heavy assault weapons, and so on, and almost got him extradited post haste". Clearly a sign of benevolent US not threatening citizens of other countries.

You're conflating "phone" and "smartphone". They are different things.

People can phone me and send well-crafted packets as much as they want, but they won't be able to turn on my phone's WiFi, accelerometer or GPS because the hardware doesn't exist. And I can answer work emails any time that I want to - by going home and logging into my computer and thence into the mail server. Which suits me fine - I don't want to answer work-email when I'm on leave.

Tracking is separate from recorded and forwarded history of travel. It has always been possible to hire an agent to follow a specific indivdual. This is different from carrying a device which tracks everybody by default at a very low cost.

An external agent to track dumb cellphones is far more complex than having an agent running inside a smart phone. It involves pretty substantial external resources and doesn't easily scale to large populations.

How much work do you do on an iphone that would be a threat to national security?

Zero is enough.

You're carrying around a camera and microphone and a bunch of other sensors including antennas, and you have no idea what they're recording or when or what they're uploading the recordings to. That's enough. If the bug isn't yours, then it's someone else's.

If you're doing more than zero work with it, then you're extra fucked.

The weird thing about this, is that it's so late. 2014, China?! Here in America we

How much work do you do on an iphone that would be a threat to national security?
I thought something like Windows makes more sense.

In general, anything without a removable battery and a camera or microphone is a threat to national security. The US declared this a long time ago. My cousin works as a civilian on an army base. Everybody, workers, soldiers, generals, etc, has been required to leave their phones in their car if they don't have a removable battery since cell phones were a thing, and IIRC, I think they just made that a no phone on base thing completely with the coming of smart phones.

While true it doesn't change the fact that we know for sure that the NSA and GCHQ are extremely bad offenders. Maybe others are at it too, but all we can do is act on the information we have and that information says that American and British products are routinely bugged.

See the harm that Snowden caused? The American worker is going to be out of a job, and the American economy is going to take a nose dive in the global market, all because Snowden didn't keep his big mouth shut.

If he HAD kept his mouth shut...long with every other consultant the government spying agencies worked with....along with every other full time employee of said spying agencies...along with every disgruntled ex employee of said spying agencies....along with every hostile infiltrator that might attack

Anything coming out of the U.S. is a threat to everybody else's national security.

That sort of absolutist anti-American rant is ever popular on Slashdot, but it is nonsense, rubbish. It is like listening to a teenager chafing under parental authority complain that his parents are worse than Hitler when it is with practical certainly not true.

The US has helped keep the free world free since the end of World War 2, and some people resent that and the failure of their preferred ideology.

The answer to that question requires you to define which specific traits you're asking for. If you're referring to "dragnet surveillance", that would probably be between 2000 and 2010 (time when most of the programs revealed by Snowden started to function). If it's about militarization of police and police having a right to break into your house and shoot you dead at any given moment just based on assumption and be indemnified by the law from responsibility as long as they had "a reason to believe there was

The answer to that question requires you to define which specific traits you're asking for.

I think the question should go to the person that claims that the US is a police state when that clearly isn't true.

The so-called "dragnet surveillance," by which I assume you are referring to NSA programs, is focused on terrorism and has at most limited relevance to criminal investigations, and none with political oppression.

US police forces aren't militarized. The US doesn't even have any gendarmes as many European countries do. Many US police forces, especially larger ones, do have a Special Weapons An

Dear NSA PR agent. You are behind the times. Snowden already released the files debunking your current lies. The current line is that "yes, we conduct dragnet surveillance, we just don't look at it", and "yes, it resulted in oppression of innocents on occasions, but that has been rare and couldn't be helped and we don't really want to talk about it".

Dear China: YOU BUILT IT. I think if it was a problem, you'd have mentioned something before now...

And do you really want to push the "national security" button on the iPhone, of all things?How much money does manufacturing those beautiful little bits of Americana add to your bottom line?I notice you're not complaining about Samsung, or any of your own local phones. How much less do they track people?

China only does assembly. They do not design the chips, and they do not write the software.

Not only that, there is the problem that nearly everyone chooses to ignore, the insecure baseband system and processor [extremetech.com]. One of the biggest moves China could make would be to both design and certify a processor and a baseboand OS. Then they could just run their own version of Replicant or whatever on the other processor while knowing that the 'hidden' part of the system is also clean. It's the certification that is

You are embarassing. The GP was right about ONE of the messages being sent by this action. It's probably also intended to help a local company. And It's probably also intended to assist in upcoming negotiations with Apple. Etc.

Don't think that a government announcement sends only one message. Each one sends multiple messages.

Also, don't think that just because China has no problem spying on itself, that it wants anybody else to do so, no matter what it, itself, does abroad. The Chinese government is h

They build the hardware, however they do not make or have access to the source code or take the lions share of the profits. So more a source code demand along with an economic preference as well as pay back for communications exclusions. You seriously didn't think there were not going to be repercussions for that. The government of China knows full well the US government is run by US corporations, hence any actions taken by the US government against China's interests will be paid back by economic attacks u

I notice you're not complaining about Samsung, or any of your own local phones. How much less do they track people?

Proprietary software means that they have no way of checking if anything is built in. Though this is likely an attempt by China to boost their own companies' advantages in the market, they have justifiable reasons regarding the security of U.S. closed-source software.

China is going to shortly release a state sponsored phone running their own OS and hardware that is totally "secure."

It's understandable that a nation like China would want to get in on the cell phone industry more deeply. Being able to insure a monopoly in China by scaring everyone away from the competition would create a huge, profitable industry internally. I just have a hard time taking what they're saying at face value.

And yes, before someone mentions it, I know the US does similar things for their own

GM, Tesla, etc. all track you in real time...regardless of what country you may be in, so...is this just a push for domestic product? Remember that although Apple has a small percentage of the cellphone market in China, it has a large percentage of the smartphone market.

To be honest, I don't know much about the tracking feature, but it sounds like something where if one big corporation takes a hit, we'll see more push back from others. Make an example of them. (Please note, I own a lot of Apple products, I'm not anti-Apple by default, just on this issue.)

Some temporary or permanent haircut to their profits is the only way to reach them.

The Russian CPU is guaranteed to have more holes, if any of them are in fact flawed, though. Their citizens are nuts if they don't think

Re The Russian CPU is guaranteed to...... just be a cpu
A Russian cpu would be like a cpu made in China - a cpu that can do some computing tasks at a price and speed that is still useful without questions surrounding its import, a stop over when shipped as part of a larger system. Jobs, security, growth and a full understanding of every aspect of the cpu design.

Bravo to China for holding Apple privacy accountable the way us Americans should.If the US Government and it's ears the NSA are allowed to violate the 4th amendment,Then what country can responsibly allow it's citizens to consume our "big brother in a box".

China is right to not trust American tech products but unfortunately China also acts like big brother when it comes to privacy. Chinese citizens are heavily spied on by the Chinese government.
All this spying is achieving is balkanizing the tech industry. At the moment If someone wants privacy it's a nobrainer one doesn't buy tech from countries that behave in wholesale spying i(i.e. US, China, GB, and possibly a few more).

Let's say a hypothetical security service, such as the Norway Safety Alliance (NoSaal), wanted to collect intelligence by putting in a backdoor, secret registers, or something in a CPU manufactured by another hypothetical entity called Ingal, how would they do it?

What intelligence gathering capability could you include in a CPU that would 1) not interfere in the normal functionality of the PC, or otherwise be detectable by the end-user?

The phone would be ship with a local version of an international treaty like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If it is for sale and connects to your nations phone towers: call voice, location, tower dump, images, mic turn on would all be a nice list of law enforcement options.
Its in the hardware and software layers that no average user can see but would be dual use to make the call on your telco network. You input a number or letter it is 'sent' as part of the networking or kept in memory as part of it

I tired to find the original source. Don't see it. Instead all we have is "

A report by broadcaster CCTV criticized the iPhone's "Frequent Locations" function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.

"This is extremely sensitive data," said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country's economic situation and "even state secrets," the researcher said."

This is far, far from a government decree. The American equivalent would be an interview on PBS. Other than approving it to air, this has nothing to do with the government. I suspect most Chinese will see right through this, it may even help Apple sales.

NSA spies on everyone to "protect" us from tyrants that would spy on everyone. Makes sense.
As a bonus the NSA has also done a fantastic job trimming down American tech industry jobs. Given the rampant unrepentant Orwellian spying surely every foreign government and corporation is eager to buy American technology products now.

NSA spies on everyone to "protect" us from tyrants that would spy on everyone. Makes sense.
As a bonus the NSA has also done a fantastic job trimming down American tech industry jobs. Given the rampant unrepentant Orwellian spying surely every foreign government and corporation is eager to buy American technology products now.

I was reading some books published in the 2008 and 2009. NSA was viewed as the stalwart of the security aspect of the internet, valiantly contributing to security software and keeping things organized and secure in that front.

I think NSA should have done the opposite of what they did. Instead of spying, they should have created anti-spying tools and issued alerts on spying and privacy aspects of modern technology.

Even if they created spying technology, it should have been created to prevent such spying

Didn't Remington import for a number of years shotguns from a Russian company called Baikal? They were terrible guns for any use other than a club, poorly balanced and an action that made an I beam look flexible. But if you wanted a gun to club someone with, a Baikal was an awesome choice. It made a hellagood club - stout and durable. Thing was built like a tank.

Imagine Chinese have the ability not only to track location of every phone, but also to activate at will. In the past intelligence operations took year to find important targets, establish contacts, recruiting and learning about inner working of organizations of interests. In order to spy now all you need is a telephone # or email. That being said, would you be comfortable if you knew that Chinese have a capacity to listen not only the phone calls but also to record conversations near the phone at any time.

Each vendor is using crowd sourced location / WiFi sniffing / map building excuses to collect location data from everyone. At least one vendor offers no ability to disable crowd sourcing without also preventing GPS from being used.

GPS ASIC's have advanced to the point where standard excuses (uses too much power, takes too long to get a fix, some indoor use) are no longer applicable. This appears to in no way be discouraging vendors from selecting shitty GPS components while propagating excuses which unnecessarily eat into data plans and upload all of your data.

Think of this from the Chinese perspective. Instead of everyone's location data being uploaded to Google or Apple... what if it was all going to Huawei? Would US officials be comfortable with data about everyone's location constantly uploaded "anonymously" to Huawei?

I think we are all better off if vendors used more capable GPS chips in their handsets and location data is not constantly being uploaded to any single vendor for any reason by default.

Being able to track people really could have a negative effect on national security. For example one might determine locations where a lot of people with advanced degrees in physics or know to have special ability in subjects such as high powered lasers congregate. The workplaces of many of these folks could easily be national defense facilities. People know to specialize in encryption might also congregate at certain workplaces. Even purchasing certain books may lead to individuals that an enemy might want to target or even corrupt or kidnap.

sorry china.you infected yourself with american popular culture.there is no cure.now buy our shitty hollywood action flicks by the billions.next up, beer and weed.and we just started selling the mustang in china, with the v8.

"When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came forth last year with U.S. government spying secrets, it didn't take long to realize that some of the behavior of the U.S. government revealed could bring on serious repercussions"

So they learn to staff and run a factory that manufactures electronic devices. Now that they know how to do so, why do they need American companies? They will start manufacturing the parts themselves, moving in the direction of making the entire device themselves. Once they can make their own devices, the government can require that their people buy those devices, only if made by they were made by Chinese companies. For "security reasons", of course.

I suggest Tim Cook remember that the Chinese market won't last forever. Sooner or later, Chinese companies will make phones, tablets, etc., and the Chinese people will buy those devices, not Apple devices.

Anything can happen in the future. We want phones now and cheap and they can make it now. If you care so much about the future and craft it so cautiously, even the smallest of changes in technological advancements will wreck all your future plans.

Technology moves so fast and China has always been one step behind, one version behind. Doesn't mean they will ever catch up unless they invest heavily in R&D and actually catch with the big boys. By the time they learn something, it has been improved on and

I had the opposite experience. CyanogenMod and AKOP used battery at such a rate my phone actually got warm when sitting on the desk doing nothing. That combined with crashing once a day or so made me go back to the carrier's firmware.

Well...I'm not sure how hidden it is. We know that they are Apple surveilance devices, and we know that Apple will roll over if the Feds ask them to.

That said, I'd be surprised if there weren't zero-day exploits that haven't yet been made public. OTOH, the same is true for EVERY smart phone.

We've also be informed that the NSA records 80% of all voice conversations. (True? False? No way to check.) This plausibly means that they have all cell phone towers bugged. So they probably rarely need to bother A